NWSL investigating incident between Harris, ref

Ashlyn Harris' apparent push of a referee is under review. (Photo Copyright Erica McCaulley for The Equalizer)

The National Women’s Soccer League is looking into an incident involving Washington Spirit goalkeeper Ashlyn Harris and referee Dimitar N. Chavdarov in the 87th minute of Wednesday’s match.

Harris appeared to push Chavdarov after he intervened with Harris, who was confronting Boston Breakers forward Jazmine Reeves. A league spokesman said that the NWSL has asked the Professional Referee Organization (PRO), who assigns officials to all NWSL matches, to review the incident. Should PRO deem action is required, the NWSL Disciplinary Committee would then get involved.

PRO is expected to look at the incident by the end of Thursday night.

As of 2:30 p.m. ET on Thursday, neither the Spirit nor the Breakers had asked for official review of the incident. Teams have 48 hours following a match to do so.

“I think it was just one of those games where everyone was just kind of losing control,” Harris said after the game. “I think the ref kind of let things get out of hand and every player was boiling at that point. I think players were put in situations where they could have been injured bad. There were tackles out there that shouldn’t have been. My hope is if this happens again, the referee can take a little bit more control of the game…It was just really unfortunate probably one of the worst games I’ve ever been a part of. “

Washington and Boston played to a 3-3 tie in the match, with the Breakers earning two penalty kicks in the first six minutes and the Spirit getting one of their own late in the match to tie the game, just minutes after the incident in question. Boston midfielder Maddy Evans received a straight red card earlier in the match for an attempted tackle on Spirit midfielder Lori Lindsey, though Evans did not appear to make contact.

Click here to watch the incident or skip ahead to the 2:35:45 mark in the video below to see the event in question: